War Is Boring

“Yesterday we visited one of the biggest tent camps in Port-au-Prince,” Matt Bors writes.

Matt Bors checks in from Haiti.

Matt Bors checks in from Haiti with a slideshow.

Matt Bors checks in from Haiti, where he’s recruiting comics talent for some long-form cartoon journalism.

Cartoonist Matt Bors is in Haiti to check out the earthquake recovery (or lack thereof) and to recruit Haitian cartoonists to help chronicle ongoing efforts. Matt’s team from Cartoon Movement has posted its first dispatch.

by DAVID AXE The Diplomat blogger David McNeill has reached northeastern Japan’s quake zone. The editors have posted an interview with McNeill: Q: Where are you now? A: Right now we’re in Sendai. We’re heading north to the town of Minamisanriku, which I know you’ve heard of. It’s basically been wiped out by the tsunami, [...]

by JAMES SIMPSON Yesterday I experienced the most surreal moments my still short life has had to offer: terra firma swaying like the deck of a storm-stricken ship, and a two-hour walk home through absolute darkness in the outskirts of the world’s largest city. My wife returned home after an eight-hour walk, a fellow refugee [...]

by KYLE MIZOKAMI At approximately 2:50 p.m. local time on March 11, a series of powerful earthquakes hit the northeastern part of Japan. The strongest of the earthquakes has been measured at an 8.9 magnitude and was felt as far away as Beijing.The earthquakes, along with resulting tsunamis and fires have so far claimed at [...]

Torrential monsoon rains since late July have flooded Pakistan’s Swat Valley and portions of neighboring Afghanistan, killing nearly 2,000 people and displacing around 2 million. Relief efforts have included deployments of troops and helicopters by the Pakistan military, the NATO force in Afghanistan and, perhaps surprisingly, the nascent Afghan air corps. “Right now, the Afghan air force has four Mi-17 helicopters in Pakistan supporting that relief effort,” said U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Michael Boera, head of Afghan air training.

Sick of this back-and-forth from BP and the Coast Guard on containment caps yet? After fears that leaks in the device could make the Gulf Coast spill even worse, national incident commander Thad Allen promised on Thursday that it was merely a “precursor” to plugging the oil. If the latest test doesn’t work (again), could the next best option be sending a mini-nuke into the water? Scientists and engineers tell The Politics Blog that the Department of Homeland Security is interested in bunker-busting techniques — not least of all because the plan could sidestep BP with existing U.S. government technology — and that inducing a massive explosion in the Gulf might not be as crazy as it sounds. Here’s why.